We were pleased to hear that there was plenty of positive news
regarding
retailer ratings education and enforcement: 71% are educating the
public
about the ESRB rating system; 94% have a policy not to sell/rent
M-rated
games to persons under age 17. It is important to emphasize that the
NIMF
"secret shoppers" were turned down 56% of the time when they attempted
to
purchase M-rated games. This turn-down rate is a significant
improvement
since 2000, when only 19% were turned down. This overall trend
demonstrates
strong and growing retailer commitment to video game rating
enforcement,
although clearly we are not yet where we want to be as an industry.
We were disappointed to learn that the NIMF continues to unevenly
weight the
results of their sting operations (judging the effectiveness of
retailer
enforcement stemming the sale of Mature-rated games to minors). The
fact
that they weight their conclusions by individual stores rather than by
actual real-world market value is significant, both to the statistics
as
well as to the practical realities of sales. Not weighting the data
evenly
by market share may well account for the NIMF sting results quite
literally
swinging wildly back and forth over the past five years.
We have repeatedly requested that the National Institute on Media and
the
Family disclose their methodology so that we may better understand how
they
cull their results and been denied year after year.
